Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/251

252 was that it was here, and that it was antagonistic. It was not that Miss Antrobus withdrew herself from the gaieties of Cedar Court: on the contrary, she participated in every single one. She did not sing, but she could play accompaniments; she was a poor actress, but a good prompter and an excellent audience; her time was always at anyone's disposal, and she had all the time there was. She had too much time—she was always there. She never went to London. She never walked out, except in the garden. She was always amiable and obliging—but she was always there. And she seemed to be always looking on.

"And she looks on through a spy-glass;" said Jane: "a tortoiseshell lorgnette or whatever it is, like Mrs. Rochester had. Or perhaps she looks at us through a microscope, as if we were beetles or those things with legs that come out of pond-water."

"She doesn't look at Miss Lucas like that," said Lucilla. "No," said Jane, "that's the worst of it. She's a great deal too nice to Miss Lucas. It's not natural. She asks after her every morning. She offers to go and sit with her—to read to her—take her out for drives."

"That's easy for you; you've only got to say I'm not strong enough. But when she comes and sits beside me in the evenings and offers to hold my wool, and tells me she's sure I should enjoy a drive, and is so nice and kind—well, if it's genuine she's a dear, but if it's only that she suspects that I'm not really an aunt, then—well . . ."

"Yes, that's it," said Jane. "That dreadful aunt is our weak point. She's the dead secret, the skeleton in the cupboard. If it wasn't for her we could defy fifty Miss Antrobuses."

"But as it is," Lucilla pointed out, "we can't."

"What a name too! Antrobus! It makes me think of a mediæval engine of war. Halberds and battering-rams and Antrobuses—I'm sure I've read that somewhere."

"I always thought all Antrobuses had big, hooky noses. You know, noses that snort at you, and say, 'Ha, ha!' like the